Pirates of Black Cove
Review
Yarrrr, she blows.
by William Thompson
reviewed on PC
Land-ho!
The second types of mission are those that are land based. These are in the form of a simple Real Time Strategy. Equipped with men hired from your pirate stronghold, you storm your way through the town to the mission objective. Of course, standing between you and your goal is the town’s local militia. These mini-RTS battles have a number of issues though. Firstly, the local militia have a horrible AI. As your men walk towards your goal, the enemy troops will walk out at you. Not as a group, mind you, but many times as individuals, or in single file. This sort of strategy leads to your men cutting them down like trees at a wood-chopping competition.
Another issue arises when the enemy do actually attack as a bunch. If one of the defenders does manage to engage your crew, it can be difficult to tell which are your men are and which are the enemy. And to attack them, you need to click on them in such a precise manner that means that if you’re slightly off, the enemy soldier will stab away at your troops unhindered until you find them. But with the ease of these land based RTS battles, it doesn’t matter much anyway. The only real issue becomes actually getting you men to and from the objective, as the path-finding is deplorable at times. Units will get stuck behind houses or simple street posts. There was even one occasion that after completing my objective, I stumbled upon half my crew stuck around the bodies of dead foes.
Collect your reward
Once missions are complete – whether it is land or sea missions – you then have to travel back to your pirate stronghold to collect your reward and continue the storyline. This can be a dreary experience, but can be bypassed with the use of a special instrument that lets you teleport to the stronghold. Of course doing so means that you will not be able to pick up all the other special items, such as ‘blueprints’ used for ship upgrades, special items required to produce potions and the 1001 pirate joke collection that are found floating in bottles. Unfortunately, most of the jokes are of the quality of those found in Christmas crackers (bon-bons) and are lucky to produce a smirk, and they often repeat, giving you little or no encouragement to scour the Caribbean for the remainder.
Fortunately the dialogue used throughout the game is more amusing. The lines can certainly bring about the occasional chuckle, especially with the decent quality voice acting. Characters each have their own style, though they are mostly on the surly side until they come around to your heroics. Even the ‘lovely’ sirens are hilariously voiced. The other sounds effects are quite good too, with the sound of waves crashing, crickets chirping in the night and swords clashing in melees. As mentioned earlier, the steel drum music puts you in a jovial mood, whilst the tone of the music becomes more dramatic as a battle ensues.
I be waiting for a (eye) patch
Pirates of Black Cove is definitely fun to play. Maybe it is simply the nostalgia in me, but sailing around the Caribbean again is a joy. But the issue of the game crashing so often is a concern. Saving the game more than I normally would certainly reduced some of the frustration, but it should not happen for a published game. The poor AI and the deplorable unit path-finding on land dampen my enthusiasm for a game that could offer so much. The controls are simple and the interface is easy to navigate. The colours are vibrant and the music upbeat. The humorous approach to the dialogue also gives the game a nice touch. But, all in all, once you’ve completed the game, there’ll be little want to head back – that is if you even decide to start with it at all. With a huge patch being downloaded as I write this review, I’m hoping that some of the issues have been addressed. It may be an idea to wait until the bugs have been ironed out before putting your hard earned pieces-of-eight on the merchant's counter.
5.4
fun score
Pros
Controls are simple and the game is fun to play when it’s not crashing. Audio is pretty good too.
Cons
The game is a little too easy, possibly due to the numerous AI issues. Game crashes too often for my liking.
